The Palm Beach Post by Christine Stapleton
May 29, 2019
The suit was dismissed Tuesday because attorneys were not able to serve Gov. Ron DeSantis and his Cabinet. DeSantis was served Wednesday morning.
As Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Cabinet met in the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on Wednesday morning, attorneys for the First Amendment Foundation and four Florida news organizations, including The Palm Beach Post, considered whether to move forward with a lawsuit accusing the Cabinet of “willfully” violating the state’s Sunshine Law.
The foundation and media outlets filed a last-ditch lawsuit early Tuesday afternoon to block the Cabinet meeting set to begin just 19 hours later. Late afternoon Tuesday, a circuit court judge in Tallahassee dismissed the lawsuit because attorneys were not able to serve the governor and Cabinet with copies of the lawsuit.
The attorneys for the foundation and media outlets quickly filed another emergency motion Tuesday evening, asking the judge to reconsider her ruling. In it, they claimed the judge should press ahead — even though the Cabinet had not seen the lawsuit — because of the gravity of the alleged violations and the difficulty in contacting the Cabinet members in Israel.